Small wins and endless pleasure

A vintage season may not be on the cards but, in these post-pandemic days, we must take nothing for granted

- LAURENCE CATLOW

I should start making an effort to keep my big mouth shut. Or do I mean that I should try to impose some sort of control over my fingers whenever I sit in front of my laptop and start tapping away at another piece for Shooting Times. Whatever I mean, there have been one or two occasions over the past year or so when I have come to regret what I said, or rather wrote, in my efforts to entertain and occasionally even instruct readers.

Most recently this happened when, in the concluding paragraph of my most recent article (The gift of spring, 19 May), I hoped that the last fortnight of May would bring warm and sunny weather with just the occasional shower to freshen things up and provide ideal conditions for young grouse chicks. It looks like the weather, after considering my words, decided that it wasn’t going to be bossed around and would do exactly what it wanted. And what it wanted was to send a miserable procession of cold days and freezing nights and lashing rain and raging winds.

I remember hoping the beginning of June might find the faces of my moorland keeper friends wreathed in smiles. When these same friends found time to read my article they will almost certainly have laughed hollow and bitter laughs, probably blaming me for tempting fate in so reckless a fashion.

My sources suggest there will be some sport on the moors this summer; they also suggest that it will be patchy and that an average sort of season is the best that can be hoped for. Time, of course, will tell.